[meteorite-list] Incoming! Asteroid Miners Are Getting Financial Boost From NASA Cash

[Ron Baalke]

http://cosmiclog.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/04/04/17602968-incoming-asteroid-miners-are-getting-financial-boost-from-nasa-cash

Incoming! Asteroid miners are getting financial boost from NASA cash
By Alan Boyle
NBC News
April 4, 2013

Commercial ventures are planning to send out profit-hunting 
missions to asteroids by the year 2020 - but in the shorter term, they're 
bringing in money by developing technologies that may show up on NASA 
spacecraft before they're put to use commercially.

For example, NASA said this week that it would award up to $125,000 to 
Arkyd Astronautics for a software system that would allow spacecraft to 
maneuver autonomously in close proximity with near-Earth asteroids - or 
the International Space Station. "Companies like SpaceX and others 
providing commercial resupply services to the ISS, as well as vehicles 
like HTV and ATV, could benefit from the proposed software," Arkyd said in 
its proposal.

So who's behind Arkyd Astronautics? Arkyd is actually an old code name for 
the Planetary Resources asteroid-mining company.

Planetary Resources' ultimate goal is to identify promising near-Earth 
asteroids, and then process the water and the precious metals they contain. 
The metals could be used in space or transported back to Earth, while the 
water could be turned into breathable air and rocket fuel for deep-space 
missions. If the reality matches the vision, asteroid mining could become a 
multitrillion-dollar industry. "It's just waiting to be had," said the 
company's co-founder and co-chairman, Eric Anderson.

The software system that won NASA's backing, known as COARSE, could be used 
on the spacecraft that Planetary Resources will send to asteroids. But it 
could conceivably be used before that on NASA's OSIRIS-REx mission, which is 
due for launch to a near-Earth asteroid in 2016. The same dual-use principle 
applies to a $124,960 NASA grant that Planetary Resources won last year for 
work on a laser-based communication system for small satellites.

Planetary Resources has said it is also receiving funding from the Pentagon's 
Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. "With reference to DARPA, the 
company cannot comment on any specific project work at this time," company 
president Chris Lewicki told NBC News in an emailed statement. "When 
appropriate, more details will be released."

By themselves, technology development contracts from NASA and DARPA won't 
get Planetary Resources to the company's near-Earth nirvana. But the income 
stream serves as a supplement to the money put into the venture by billionaire 
investors such as Google's Larry Page and Eric Schmidt.

More funding ahead

There could be more government funding ahead: Last month, Aviation 
Week reported that NASA was planning to ask for $100 million as a down 
payment on a multibillion-dollar mission to corral a 23-foot-wide (7-meter-wide) 
asteroid and bring it to the vicinity of the moon for study. Also last 
month, lawmakers hinted that they'd support increased funding for asteroid 
research, particularly in light of February's meteor blast over Russia.

That beefed-up government spending could be seen as competition for commercial 
asteroid ventures - but it's more likely to turn into an opportunity.

"Let's create a cooperative situation from the very beginning, where different 
companies get a chance to participate and use some of that taxpayer money 
to catalyze the beginning of an industrial economy in space," said Rick 
Tumlinson, chairman of Deep Space Industries.

Like Planetary Resources, Deep Space Industries is trying to get into the 
asteroid-mining business - and looking for closer-to-home opportunities in the 
meantime. Tumlinson said his company is in the midst of discussions with NASA 
officials about potential deals. He doesn't mind the fact that he's competing 
with Planetary Resources for the business.

"One company is an anomaly. Two companies is an industry," Tumlinson said.

Selling technology

Both companies want to capitalize on technologies long before they hit the 
asteroid jackpot: Deep Space Industries touts 3-D printers that can turn 
ground-up metal into high-strength parts, even in zero gravity. Planetary 
Resources, meanwhile, plans to sell its Arkyd space telescopes for Earth 
observation or space exploration.

"If you wanted to send a camera to Mars or Venus, you could do it yourself," 
Planetary Resources' Anderson said.

Anderson provided an update on Planetary Resources' plans this week during a 
Hacker News Seattle meet-up. Here are some of the high points:

	o The first prototype telescope is now scheduled to 
launch within about 22 months, most likely as a secondary payload on a 
rocket yet to be determined. That's roughly a year later than the initial 
projections, but Anderson told NBC News that the time frame was dependent 
on launch opportunities.

	o Eventually, swarms of six to 12 probes would 
be sent out to near-Earth asteroids. Anderson said the first such deep-space 
reconnaissance mission could be launched in five to seven years.

	o One of the asteroids on Anderson's "top 20 list" of prospects is an 
object cataloged as 2011 UW158, which is about a kilometer (half a mile) wide. 
The travel time for a space probe would be a little more than half a year, 
and if 2011 UW158 could be successfully mined, the value of the raw materials 
could range from $300 billion to $5.4 trillion, Anderson said. "That is 
a nice piece of rock," he said.

	o Platinum-group metals, or PGMs, are among the most valuable (and most 
talked about) resources that asteroids could yield. The price of platinum is 
currently just a bit less than the price of gold - about $1,520 per ounce. 
Anderson said a single 500-meter-wide (quarter-mile-wide) asteroid could contain 
more platinum than has been mined during the history of humanity. Planetary 
Resources is looking at a process that would turn the extracted platinum into 
220-pound, 7-foot-wide "wiffleballs" of foamed metal that could be sent down 
through the atmosphere without breaking up. The balls would hit the ground at a 
velocity of about 60 mph.